Gender in Gnosticism

Gender in Gnosticism

If the woman had not separated from the man, she should not die with the man. His separation became the beginning of death. Because of this, Christ came to repair the separation, which was from the beginning, and again unite the two, and to give life to those who died as a result of the separation, and unite them. But the woman is united to her husband in the bridal chamber. Indeed, those who have united in the bridal chamber will no longer be separated. Thus Eve separated from Adam because it was not in the bridal chamber that she united with him.

–Gospel of Philip

God, the one true God, the source of being is seen as a force that transcends gender and ultimately God is beyond categories of gender. But at the same time gender is very formative of our human experience. So just like God in an absolute sense cannot be contained in words but we still have to approach God through language, right? Through myths and stories and theology and…which is all kind of creating analogies about God. Similarly we have to approach God, or approach God through gender. And traditionally of course there’s been this hyper masculinisation of God, in which God has been primarily confined to male attributes, the father, the son or you know, God as the old bearded guy of the Cisteen Chapel ceiling or God as Superman, shooting down fire from the sky and destroying people. What Gnosticism works to change this image, not to destroy the male imagery of the father, the son or the imagery of the brother, but rather to compliment it with female imagery as well. SO that we understand in some sense that our relationship to God is like a father and a mother, like a lover and the beloved, a brother and a sister; so it’s like a complimentary to the relationship.

So what I want to talk about tonight is the metaphysical nature of gender itself. I’m going to leave the question of God alone for this evening and talk about our own experiences of gender and what the spiritual significances of those might be. I think we begin from a Gnostic perspective that gender arises out of the cosmos, out of the material reality or the physical reality and like other dualities, good /evil, light/dark, right/left…these are seen as the constituents parts of material reality, its these dualities and divisions and separations that make the material what it is and create the limitations that we associate with physical reality. And of these limitations it is probably gender that Gnosticism sees as the most traumatic one of all, well except maybe the good/evil dichotomy. But the division of male/female gender, the division is very traumatic in a lot of ways, it’s been a sort of division of the wholeness of the spirit into two separate pieces and as a result can often lead to very self destructive behavior as all too often when we adhere to the gender identity that we are taught to display and see in ourselves and we don’t find a way to pursue the complimentary aspects of the spirit then we quickly descend into patterns of abuse and dependence and domination that are really devoid of the true spiritual connection.

So one of the goals of Gnosis is to transcend and heal these dualities and divisions in human experience. And thus the question of gender and the question of how we heal the brokenness that is sort of implicit in it is stressed in the Gospel of Thomas especially saying 22:

Jesus saw some infants nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing infants are like those who enter the (Father’s) kingdom.”

They said to him, “Then shall we enter the (Father’s) kingdom as babies?”

Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, a likeness in place of a likeness, then you will enter [the kingdom].”

So when we look at this issue of what needs healing and the reconciliation, the issue, the problem, is that we’ve been taught and conditioned not just in our own lifetimes but over in generations of humanity to ascribe huge importance over what are really minor biological differences and not really seek to expand our consciousness in this area. To assume that we are locked in this duality and that there is no way to transcend it.

So what Gnosticism does, is to argue that each of us has a spiritual identity and it is the spiritual identity that can lead us back on a path to wholeness this is because even though we live in a very divided and sometimes painful existence in the physical world the spirit has what the Gnostic teacher Carpocrates would call a “deep spiritual memory.” These are the words he uses “the spiritual memory.” The most famous place where he talks about what this memory is when he makes his Christological statement about Jesus and says “That Jesus is a man like any other man, the son of Joseph; except that he was different from other people in that his mind, pure and clear could remember, could exercise memory of what it had seen in the realm of the ungenerated God.”

So if Jesus is a great model for what we can attain, then through Gnosis we can gain access to these spiritual memories of what was in the realm of the ungenerated God, to use Carpocrates’ term. And these memories are of wholeness, of a unity, indeed not a cessation of our individual existences, but rather as it were a completion of them. And part of this spiritual memory of wholeness beyond the divisions of gender is part of what makes up this spiritual memory, and it is in this sense that the Gospel of Thomas puts this question as central to the idea of what is going to bring us into what the Gospel calls the Kingdom. It is very important to make clear here that, the Gospel of Philip makes it clear that not only is this unity, the Pleroma, the fullness, it’s not only our destiny, but it’s also as spiritual beings, but also as in the words of the Gospel of Philip, our earliest origin, the earliest origin of things. So there is some way that this wholeness of the Pleroma is imprinted and on our spirits, this pneuma or the breath that gives us life, or rather makes us human, and we can access those memories that are imprinted on us. But it is something that takes time as we are held back by other things.

So when we begin to pursue through Gnosis a kind of healing and wholeness through the question of gender a number of things begin to happen in our lives and in the way we experience the world. First of all we begin to revolutionize the way in which we relate to others especially those of the other gender or to use the more common term, the opposite sex…and really what begins to happen is instead of seeing them quote “as the opposite sex” as something to be possessed or owned or intimidated or feared or dominated or dominated by in an unhealthy way, we can begin to construct relationships with those of other genders in a way that really engage in a true human level; and seek on those others how we can begin to complete our own spiritual existence. In this sense relationships between men and women are very important because they have so much to teach us about this completeness, this wholeness and what it might look like. We are in many ways, forces of revelation to each other. Allowing us to open up the mysteries of the hidden things concealed in those things visible, to use the words of the Gospel of Philip. Or to return to the Gospel of Thomas as Jesus says “The person of light, lights up the whole world.” Or in other words, we are each other’s light. These places of spiritual wholeness are sometimes shrouded in a kind of darkness and ignorance. Through the light provided by other people we can begin to see the contours of their meaning.

So I think there is an importance for anyone seeking the Gnostic path to obtain a certain degree of intimacy with people of the opposite sex. Now what I want to make clear is what I am talking about is not tied in any way to what is called sexuality. I’m certainly not saying that heterosexual sexuality is somehow necessary for Gnosis, although it can indeed be an important manifestation of this kind of intimacy. Or it can be a barrier to this kind of intimacy, as we know. Of course we know there are lots of people who are simply not heterosexual. They don’t share this sexual orientation, as part of their constituent identities; they have some kind of other sexual orientation; that they are drawn to other ways of living as sexual beings. Gnosticism of course is generally open to lots of different forms of sexual identity.

But ultimately what I am saying is, it is not that important about sexual contact, it’s about intimacy. The kind of inter gender intimacy that can be pursued in lots of ways. Through friendship, through intellectual exchange, through the kind of connection where you learn to build mutual networks of care…and exchange of thoughts and ideas, and spiritual growth. Men and women learn from each other in a mutual way when they begin to experience this intimacy. Which indeed, indeed, even when it does involve sexuality, when it does involve heterosexual contact is in fact something that transcends it. It is an intimacy that takes place on the spiritual level and transcends merely the physical level.

So this should make clear, as is important to state, that gender like other forms of division in the material world are not EVIL; it’s not as if gender is something bad and evil and something we want to run away from. These sources of division are indeed sources of limitation. U ironically or paradoxically, the very things that create these limitations can be the sources of the transcendent liberation, that can lift us up out of the world as defined by limitations and limits or rather live in that world in a way that helps set our spirits free.

The question of suffering, similarly suffering is something we see as to be transcended through Gnosis but at the same time, it offers us things. It offers us understanding and compassion toward others. Again it can make us bitter and angry people or it can make us much more open to other people. And I think gender is much the same way. It can be a very troubling phenomenon or it can be something we harness the force of to propel us along the spiritual journey in a way that incorporates healing and reconciliation. So ultimately I think though, the pursuit of gender wholeness, if that is what we want to call it, is probably more importantly something that happens within ourselves. Our intra-gender identities rather than our inter-gender relationships.

When we begin to search for that spiritual memory that Carpocrates talks about; that memory of spiritual wholeness. In the Pleroma, that was later divided through the shaping of the Demiurge. We are really searching to recover in our own beings a wholeness of gender that has been divided and separated in our own experience of life. It is important to remember that of course that, Demiurgic forces and Archonic forces and Pleromic forces are not so much beings but are forces operating within us. So we are looking for something in our own identities and what we want to do is move closer to wholeness. And it is this wholeness that is already deep within us. As I said, as Carpocrates said it is imprinted on the spiritual memory, that we all possess through the pneuma, through the spirit that is within us.

So we want to move closer to that wholeness that is both our ultimate destiny and is our earliest origins. To use the words of the Gospel of Philip, we want to gradually transform our lives, and our beings and our existences into that image of that spiritual memory at the heart of the pneuma, the spirit. Which is indeed what really makes us human.

The journey of Gnosis is predicated on the idea that even in the midst of this limited material existence we can begin to transform things and transform ourselves. Our bodies, our minds, in a way that infuses them with a new wholeness of the spirit. And as you see in that same verse, saying 22 of the Gospel of Thomas that we not only recreate the unity of gender, that it goes on to say that we, it goes on to say that we, you know, make the hand in the place of a hand and the foot in the place of a foot and likeness in the place of a likeness… One way to think of that is it is talking about a recreation of the self and the image of the spirit. Or as some have said, through our spirit we are created in the image of God. What we need to do through Gnosis is to recreate ourselves into the likeness of God. That is to transform the entirety of our being into a full realization of this image of God that is in our deepest human natures.

In a very real sense we have already in our spirits a sort of latent inner partnership between things we have called male and female in our experience of the material and intellectual world. Thus, in a very real sense each of us has within us, a sort of inner man and inner woman, what some mystics have spoken of as the Animus and Anima. We must pursue the kind of inner metaphysical partnership that will allow their mutual complimentarity that will shine forth in our lives and transform our consciousness.

Just as we want to revolutionize our relationships externally with regards to gender, and the opposite sex; so in parallel, we want to revolutionize our gender relationships internally within our own identities.

Now, if we look at Christ and Sophia, I want to discuss how they personify a Gnostic theory of gender both in terms of what we should do unto others and how we should persue that wholeness of gender within ourselves. We see in the stories of Christ and Sophia a great exchange, a great partnership, a sort of dialogue that is going on in these stories of “cosmic missions” and developments in time. These forces that represent in some sense the feminine and the masculine within the whole unity of the Pleroma.

If we look at the creation myth of the Valentinians, these were the Gnostics that followed Valentinus, the great preacher of the 2^nd century, it is a little more different and complicated from what you may be used to. Just to give you a taste of what I mean, what happens to Sophia in this story is that… of course it starts off the same, she’s an Aeon, she’s in fact sometimes portrayed as the yuoungest of the Aeons, and she goes off by herself. Wanting to obtain more about her origins, thinking she can learn more by being alone and thinking alone. This of course brings about division and separation. What she produces, now in the Valentinian story is not the Demiurge immediately, but rather a realm of imperfection, the cosmos or chaos which is the stuff that the Demiurge will later create the cosmic world. What happens in the Valentinian story (again you’ll see how this is different to the simpler Gnostic story) is that this is so traumatic that Sophia literally gets split into two pieces. There ends up being a higher Sophia, who remains kind of connected fully in the Pleroma, but there also emerges a lower Sophia, part of Sophia’s identity becomes trapped in the imperfect realm. It becomes trapped in the cosmic chaos, and it tries and tries to get out, but it can’t. What happens is the Demiurge emerges out of the imperfect realm and begins to create all this stuff and eventually creates human beings. In the Valentinian story the Demiurge thinks its creating everything on its own for its own power. But in fact the lower Sophia (Echamoth) with the help of the Aeons, is influencing the Demiurge. They are subtly, sort of influencing what he does. In particularly, subtly pressing him into the creation of human beings.

The lower Sophia realizes the only way she can free herself and the rest of the spirit that is trapped in the cosmic world is if there can emerge some kind of beings that will have some kind of amalgamated identities. That is, they will be, part of the cosmic world and part of the spirit world. Part cosmos and part Pleroma. This she sees in human beings. So there is a sort of subversion of what the Demiurge wants to do. He wants to create automatons to worship him, but Sophia wants to create autonamus beings that can achieve liberation. So it is the lower Sophia, in this Valentinian story that comes into the form of the serpent. The lower Sophia says, “Alright, I have to get in contact with the human beings.” And so she says “What I’ll do is that I will go into the most humblest and the most simple of physical things. This animal that simply slithers along the ground, the serpent.” The Demiurge is so overwhelmed with his own arrogance and his own power that he’s not going to notice something as humble as the serpent. It is going to be completely off his radar screen.

So the lower Sophia, enters the serpent and comes to the people and then has the dialogue in which she begins to tell them the truth about things which is as she says, the Demiurge is not the one true God. That in fact human beings have this divine core within them and that if they would have the courage to eat the fruit of moral truth, if they have the courage to face the realities of the universe or rather not the universe but of all existence. Then they too can be transformed into God.

So you can see that is a little more complicated than other stories. I wouldn’t say it contradicts “on the origin of the World” more that it compliments it. What we see is the relationship between Christ and Sophia becomes more explicit. When Christ comes down to earth and manifests in the human being Jesus, Valentinian Gnostics would say “Why?” you know, why? This is a problem, why does Christ come into the world? I mean what is the point? They would say it is to help liberate Sophia. It is because Sophia is so important, so fundamental to him in the Pleroma, that he sees the lower Sophia and the rest of the spirit in the cosmic realm. He wants to enter that world; he wants to be willing to empty himself into a human existence so that he can help bring about the liberation of the lower Sophia and the reunification of the two parts of Sophia. Because there is a great pain involved in the separation for every being in the Pleroma because their wholeness has been ripped apart. So there is very much a sense that Christ and all the other beings or Aeons and God, even God, is deeply moved by compassion. It is compassion that moves all of these forces to try to help us. It is compassion and it is suffering. As Origen, an early Christian theologian said something interesting, he said, he was talking about Jesus Christ and he said “Christ suffered before he died on the cross.” And that “Actually Christ suffered before he was even born.” He goes on to say that “If Christ did not suffer, he would have never have come down to Earth.” That is his explanation of why Christ enters the world. That you can see is tied into this very interesting relationship between Christ and Sophia.

– Brother Matthew Ouroboro

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Sophia: Means “Wisdom.” Like the Logos this is considered a primal form. While the Logos is personified as male, Sophia is female. Logos has a direct and intellectual basis for guidance, Sophia is inspirational (sometimes even sensual). The basic idea is comparable to wisdom being Sophia (sofia) or “Holy
Spirit” in the form of pure wisdom. Pistis, means faith, hylic, or Prunikus Sophia refers to the imperfect or earthly state of the living, or earthly form from Pleromic origins. ”As appropriated by Sethianism and the Gnostics in general, Sophia is a hypostatized form of Hokmah, (i.e., the divine Wisdom of Proverbs 8, Job 28, Sirach 24).” ( See; Turner.)

Carpocrates: (100?-150 CE); Formed a sect in Alexandria known as Carpocrations. Possible successor to Samaritan Simon Magus. He taught reincarnation in his Gnostic philosophy. An individual had to live many lives and adsorb a full range of experiences before being able to return to God. They practiced free sexuality. They believed that Jesus was the son of Joseph. They questioned the docetic aspects attributed to Jesus. (See; “Stromata,” Bk 3.) http://www.antinopolis.org/carpocrates.html

Pleroma: The word means “fullness,” and the ‘All.’ It refers to ”all existence
beyond matter. Refers to the world of the Aeons, the heavens or spiritual
universe, which represents being out of the state of matter. According to the
“Gospel of Truth” “….all the emanations from the Father are Pleromas.” see
Tractates 3, 2, Codices, I, and XII, Nag Hammadi Lib. Pleroma can have other
connotations according to the Gnostic school of thought, some differences in
Sethian and Valentinian (other) schools can be noted. Pleroma, is different than
Logos. (See; Logos, See also; Gaffney, p. 246.)

Pneumatic: One who identifies with the spirit (pneuma), beyond that of the
physical (hylic) world and the intellect alone (psychic). The pneuma, described
in the ”Gospel of Phillip,” as ‘breath,’ refers to bonding with the internal
spark (spinther) that came from and is drawn to reunite with the Father in some
Gnostic schema. One who awakens it (the spinther) within the self does it
through the process of gnosis. (See; Gregory of Nicea (Basil), who used the term
in his mystical teachings, and is a later term which connotes Gnostic. See;
”Early Christian Mystics,” McGinn, Crossroads, 2003.)

the “Pneumatics”, correspond with “Pneuma”, the spiritual
“breath”, the spiritual order.  These are the Gnostic Initiates,
those who go beyond mentality/consciousness, and all modes related to
the individuality.  That which concerns Pneumatics, is as different
from the psychics, and the psychics from the hylics.

Aeon: These are characterized as emanations from the ‘first cause,’ the Father in some Gnostic schema. The word not only refers to the “worlds” of emanation, but to the personalities as well. Sophia, Logos, and the other high principles are aeons. ”A link or level of the great chain of being, the sum total which is the ‘All’ or Pleroma…Can also mean a world age.” (See; Gaffney) ”According to other Gnostics, for example Valentinus, the first principle is also called Aeon or the unfathomable, the primeval depth, the absolute abyss, bythos, in which everything is sublimated…” translated by Scott J. Thompson from G.W.F.
Hegel’s ”Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie ii ,” (Theorie Werkausgabe, Bd. 19), Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp Verlag, 1977, 426-430] ( See also; Pleroma.) The first ten aeons in the Valentinian schema are, Bythios (Profound) and Mixis (Mixture), Ageratos (Never old) and Henosis (Union), Autophyes (Essential nature) and Hedone (Pleasure), Acinetos (Immoveable) and Syncrasis (Commixture,) Monogenes (Only-begotten) and Macaria (Happiness). http://www.wbenjamin.org/hegel_kabbalah.html

Demiurge: Meaning ‘Creator’ in Greek. Thought to be the “Craftsman” or creator of the material world. (Heracleon) In Orthodox thought this is a supernatural entity or force, such as the appearance of God to Moses. In the Gnostic schema the Word refers to an order, and it may be a natural sort of intelligent design, related to wisdom, the earthly or kenomic state of the higher wisdom, or form from the Pleroma. The material state is considered less than the Pleromic, and highly flawed. Archons seem to be emanations from the Demiurge process, much like other emanations from the Pleroma. (See; Pleroma, Kenoma, Archon.)

http://magdelene.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/the-demiurge/

Echmoth: (Echamoth) Meaning a form of wisdom; “Echamoth is one thing and Echmoth, another. Echamoth is Wisdom simply, but (e) Echmoth is the Wisdom of death, which is the one who knows death, which is called “the little Wisdom”. (”Gospel of Phillip, NHL.)

 

Reflection for November 15, 2008: Prayer is a gift from God

Save me, O God, by Thy name, and judge me by Thy strength.

Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.

For strangers are risen up against me, and oppressors seek after my soul; they have not set God before them. Selah

Behold, God is mine helper; the Lord is with them that uphold my soul.

He shall reward evil unto mine enemies; cut them off in Thy truth.

I will freely sacrifice unto Thee; I will praise Thy name, O LORD, for it is good.

For He hath delivered me out of all trouble, and mine eye hath seen my desire upon mine enemies.

–Psalm 54

“If we are quite content to pray without paying attention to our prayer
or to God, it shows we have not much idea of who God is, and that we do
not really appreciate the grace and the privilege of being able to speak
to Him in prayer.  For prayer is a gift of God, a gift which is by no
means given to all men.  Perhaps it is given to few because so few
desire it, and of those who have received it so few have received it
with gratitude.”

–Thomas Merton

…….

In the Name of the Great Life! My good messenger of Light who travelleth to the house of its friends, come, direct my speech and open my mouth in praise that I may wholeheartedly praise the Living Gods.

In the Name of the Great Life! I worship Life and I praise my Lord Yeshu d-Hiya and that great Presence of Glory which emanated from itself.

The Gnostic Prayerbook

 

Prayer for October 16, 2008

We have purified our hands in Kushta In the Name of the Living Gods!

We have purified our hands in Kushta and our lips in faith.

We have uttered words of radiance and were absorbed in thoughts of Light.

Thou, my Lord Yeshu d-Hiya, art blessed and praised and thy praise is established.

Great is the strength of Life; abounding the glory of the mighty Life! Honor rests upon the Uthras who sit in glory.

This is prayer and praise which came to them from the great place of Light and the everlasting Abode.

We praise with it when we have risen from our sleep, before any have spoken falsehood.

For anyone who prays this prayer there will be forgiving of sins and transgressions in the great place of Light and in the everlasting Abode.

And Life is transcendant.

–Extract from the Mandaean text, Qulasta (Hymns of Praise)

 

Reflection for September 19, 2008: They climb by hidden words

“Our physical demand is great. We need a healthy body. We dealt so much in soulfulness, we forgot the holiness of the body. We neglected physical health and strength; we forgot that we have holy flesh, no less than holy spirit.”

- Avraham Kook (Orot)

“One whose heart, however, is aroused and whose mind is illuminated, lights up more than the sun and moon.
They light up more than sun and moon, and they spread the Call and the Scent in the world.
Daily disciples meet with such a one, receiving from them the Sign and ascend by that ones strength.
Because the strength of their Father (Life) is kept with them, and the word of their Father rests with such a one.
When their soul ascends the watchtowers do not subject them to inspection, and the planets do not speak to that one in judgment.
They are not transformed to the pathways of the obscene ones, and their eye does not behold the darkness.
They go forward on the way of the ones of established Righteousness, on which Habshabba walks.
They climb by hidden words, which darkness hid from the passing one.
They climb by secret Mystery, their form is hidden and kept before the worlds.
Blessed and again blessed, are those who separate from the world; they ascend and behold the place of light.”

–Mandaean (Secret teachings of Angelic Kings)

 

Reflection for April 1, 2008: blessing seven hours of the day

“True love leads a man to fulfillment, not by drawing thing to himselfbut by forcing him to transcend himself and to become something greaterthan himself. True spiritual love takes the isolated individuals,exacts from him labor, sacrifice, and the gift of himself. It demandsthat he ‘lose his life’ in order to find it again on a higher level –in Christ.”

–Thomas Merton

I am forever walking upon these shores,

Betwixt the sand and the foam,

The high tide will erase my foot-prints,

And the wind will blow away the foam.

But the sea and the shore will remain

Forever.

Once I filled my hand with mist.

Then I opened it and lo, the mist was a worm.

And I closed and opened my hand again, and behold there was a bird.

And again I closed and opened my hand, and in its hollow stood a man with a sad face, turned upward.

And again I closed my hand, and when I opened it there was naught but mist.

But I heard a song of exceeding sweetness.

It was but yesterday I thought myself a fragment quivering without rhythm in the sphere of life.

Now I know that I am the sphere, and all life in rhythmic fragments moves within me.

They say to me in their awakening, “You and the world you live in are but a grain of sand upon the infinite shore of an infinite sea.”

And in my dream I say to them, “I am the infinite sea, and all worlds are but grains of sand upon my shore.”

Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, “Who are you?”

–Kahlil Gibran

When I read the Bible, I do so with the belief that it is not a static text but the Living Word and that I must be continually open to new revelations –whether they come from a lesbian friend or a doctor opposed to abortion.

–Barack Obama

“Like a servant lying prostrate before Thee, our eyes are lifted to Thee, our lips give Thee praise and blessing seven hours of the day and the three watches of the night.”

–Qulasta (Ancient Aramaic Prayer Book)

 

reflection for March 20, 2008: Yohanna d Masbuta (John the Baptist)

“True solitude is found in humility, which is infinitely rich. False
solitude is the refuge of pride, and it is infinitely poor.”

–Thomas Merton

	In Beginning was Mind;
	And Mind was with GOD.
	So Mind was God. This was in Beginning with GOD.
	All kept coming into existence through it; And apart from it came into existence not a single [thing].
	What has come into existence in it was Life; And LIFE was the Light of the [true] Men.
.	And the Light shineth in the Darkness; And the Darkness did not emprison it.
		It was the True Light, Which enlighteneth every Man Who cometh into the world.
		It was in the world; And the world kept coming into existence through it And the world did not know it.
		It came unto its own; And its own did not receive it.
		But as many as received it, To them it gave power To become Children of God,
.		To those who have faith in his name,
			Who were brought to birth, Not out of [the blending of] bloods,
			Nor of urge of flesh, Nor of urge of a male, But out of God.
			So Mind became flesh And tabernacled in us,
.			And we beheld its glory, Glory as of [? an] only-begotten from Father, Full of Delight and Truth.
				For of its Fulness we all received, And Delight over against Delight –Gnostic John the Baptizer

PRE-EXISTENCE OF YOHANNA

An example of Yeshu (Jesus) teaching reincarnation can be found in the seventh book of the Pistis Sophia (an ancient Manichaean text dated to the 3rd century or earlier). In it we read of the reincarntion of Elijah, or Elias, as Yohanna d Masbuta (John the Baptist):

“Now it happened that when I came into the midst of the archons of the aeons, I looked down at the world of mankind, at the command of the First Mystery.

I found Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist , before she had conceived him and I cast into her a power which I had received from the Little Jao , the Good, who is in the Midst, so that he should be able to preach before me, and prepare my way and baptise with water of forgiveness .

Now that power was in the body of John. And again, in place of the soul of the archons which he was due to receive, I found the soul of the prophet Elias in the aeons of the sphere; and I took it in and I took his soul again; I brought it to the Virgin of the Light, and she gave it to her paralemptors. They brought it to the sphere of the archons, and they cast it into the womb of Elisabeth. But the power of the Little Jao, he of the Midst, and the soul of the prophet Elias were bound in the body of John the Baptist.

You doubted now at the time when I spoke to you because John said : ‘I am not the Christ’ and you said to me : ‘lt is written in the scripture : when the Christ shall come, there will come Elias before him and he will prepare his way’. But when you said this to me, I said to you : ‘Elias has indeed come and he has prepared all things, as it is written : And they did to him as they pleased. And when I knew that you did not understand what I said to you concerning the soul of Elias, which was bound in John the Baptist, I answered you openly in speech, face to face, saying : ‘If it pleases you to accept John the Baptist, he is Elias of whom I have said that he will come’”. – Pistis Sophia, ch 7

 

reflection for January 22, 2008:The secret unity

Why is it that one wanders through samsara?

The answer is that one wanders because of the confusion of not knowing one’s own nature.

For example, if a person possesses a stone containing gold in his fire place,

He might, when not recognizing it to be gold, undergo the misery of starvation.

Likewise, when your master points out your essence, it is an expression of great kindness.

 

– Union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen: A Commentary on The Quintessence of Spiritual Practice, The Direct Instructions of the Great Compassionate One by Chokyi Rinpoche (page 1113)

“Two grave errors of dualism can be cured by a simple flu. First is the belief that you are your mind, or that your soul is separate from the body. This ignorance of your true self causes egocentrism, suffering, and a false sense of separation from everything else in the universe. Second is the concurrent belief that, since your essential nature is non-material, the material world is, at best, an amusement, or at worst, a burden to be thrown off. This ignorance causes the error of supposing that God is not present in the material world, leading either to asceticism on the one hand, or to hedonism on the other. A little dose of reality – that, with a different balance in blood sugars or a change in neurochemistry, the supposedly separate ‘you’ changes completely – can remove both obstacles to realization.

Return again to the model of the six-pointed star, a symbol of the integral life. To live only materially, denying the movements of the soul, is an impoverished life. But to live as if the soul, disembodied, is all that matters in life, is likewise a form of impoverishment, an embrace of one portion of human experience, and a denial or denigration of the rest. Kabbalah, like the symbol of the Star of David, is centrally about balance – bringing into balance the ever-shifting forces of creation. Thus it, too, is an intivation to live in an integral way: bodily and spiritually, experiencing the joys and sorrows of human life and their transcendence, uniting heaven and earth. The messianic age is that time at which the sacred marriage will be consummated: the meeting of sky-god and earth-goddess, masculine and feminine, spirit and matter, line and circle, the Holy One and the Presence, temporality and eternity, soul and body. And the ‘secret of Unity’ of which these same Kabbalists speak is that they are already one – since time itself is only half of the infinite. Unity may be experienced now, but not by leaving anything behind.”

 

- Jay Michaelson (God in Your Body: Kabbalah,

Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice)

 

 

 

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Saṃsāra, the Sanskrit and Pāli term for “continuous movement” or “continuous flowing” refers in Buddhism to the concept of a cycle of birth (jāti) and consequent decay and death (jarāmaraṇa), in which all beings in the universe participate and which can only be escaped through enlightenment. Saṃsāra is associated with suffering and is generally considered the antithesis of nirvāṇa or nibbāna.

 

Grail Quest part 2

 

Grail quest part 1

 

He who sees himself only on the outside

I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

–Revelation 22:13

Actually, the ground of everything is within me and it is God, and it’s within everybody too. And there’s one ground for everybody, and this ground in the Divine Mercy. . . . The peo­ple of the unveiling, that is to say the Sufis, ask the Mercy of God to subsist in them. These are the ones who ask in the Name of God and He shows Mercy upon them only by making the Mercy subsist in them. This is a totally different outlook. It is the outlook whereby the Mercy of God is not arranged on the outside in events for me-in good and bad events-but it is subsisting in me all the time. Therefore what happens is that if the Mercy of God is subsisting in me-and that goes to say if I am united with the will of God- . . . if I am completely united with the will of God in love, it doesn’t matter what happens outside, because everything that is going on outside that makes any sense is grounded in the same ground in which I am grounded. The opposition between me and everything else ceases, and what remains in terms of opposition is purely acci­dental and it doesn’t matter. And this is . . . a basic perspective in all . . . the highest religions. You ought to get down to this, you get down to it in Christianity, you get down to it in Buddhism, you get down to it in Hinduism, and so forth. It is arriving at a unity in which the superficial differences don’t matter. It doesn’t, mean that they’re not real, it doesn’t mean that they’re not there. They still subsist… .

–Thomas Merton

1. Left Hand Path Practices in the West

“Satanism is not a white light religion; it is a religion of the flesh, the mundane, the carnal – all of which are ruled by Satan, the personification of the Left Hand Path“

The Satanic Bible, Book Of Lucifer 3:paragraph 30

The Left Hand Path is solitary, individualistic, personal, based on self development, self analysis, self empowerment. Altruism is materialistically equated as long term selfishness. I think all forms of Satanism are considered Left Hand Path, even Devil Worship and inverse Christian-Satanists are Left Hand Path, although they are frequently considered deluded. Frequently called “evil” and “dark” by non Satanic religions, the followers of the left hand path often have had to remain in the darkness or face severe persecution from the religions that ironically call themselves “good”. This is testimony enough that the image of the purely “good” icons is a veneer; a non-truth.

Features of LHP philosophies frequently include:

• Emphasis on freethought, not dogma or strict systems.
• Highly individualistic
• A distinct rejection of absolutes and moralism
• Personal, not universal.

Freethought, Individualism and moral relativism
Left Hand Path philosophies all have an emphasis on freethought; not dogma or strict systems. The “rules” in LHP religions are frequently merely “guidelines”. The same attitude it applied to all knowledge, including that of the knowledge of reality and morals. Subjectivism and relativism are almost universally assumed amongst followers of the left hand path.

Personal Belief, not Universal
Left Hand Path philosophies do not claim that they are the best religion for all people and frequently claim they are only a valid religion for some people. “Satanists are born, not made” _{Anton LaVey}. Satanism and the LHP is striking for the lack of missionizing. This is probably the result of the admission that no religion, philosophy or belief system is suitable for all people.

“Yes, I can see why the idea of free thought, individualism and moral relativism (which requires the effort to think for yourself before judging something right or wrong) may be a turn off for some people or why they just don’t get it. I hope that doesn’t apply to you.”

 

oh I get it, I understand it fully

at a fundamental level I think it is un-Christ like though…

give and receive…vessels and light…kabbalah, that is all there is.

I know many see the divine as a nice treasure chest to plunder…I don’t.
I think the “gimme gimme gimme” approach to life and the divine is childish.
At a very real fundamental level it is rape to my mind, forcing the hand, taking the fruit before it is ripe

Agenda is agenda. Agenda is always wrong, as you are not following the true self, the “divine will”; I realize it is your path and that it embraces selfishness and sees that as divine will…to some extent.

However I will never agree to something that is fundamentally about the self, survival is one thing, taking and empowering at the expense of others is another

This is not meant to be an attack, it is just my view.

You wrote
” Self development? Isn’t that what spiritual training is supposed to offer? Isn’t this the point of alchemy?
Self Analysis? Aren’t we supposed to learn about ourselves? Don’t we value the inward path?
Self Empowerment? Don’t we prefer to be beings that have significance in the world of others or do we prefer to be
ineffectual?”

No it is Self development, not self development. In the east views generally speaking there is ONLY self. This is the root of one of the misunderstandings of the LHP since its inception. That self is NOT the self, it is THE SELF; or, GOD. The self development of alchemy etc. is to grow the true self as Thomas Merton calls it. It really has nothing to do with the self at all.

The I before is I and WE, the I after is I, and only I as there is no WE. And there is no i.

 

That is the fundamental point. Your view is like a man who opens a door..but refuses to enter. They are happy quickly going in, and running back out. Having gotten something that they want it is time to stay outside the door. This makes illusion more attractive, nicer, you are indeed self empowering. But illusion is illusion.

 

Like a drug addict you have to carry on taking more drugs to keep that high. That is of course part of where other people come in; little fish feed on big fish at a very real physical and spiritual level. Exploitation. There is someone at the top of the pyramid, sat back laughing, gaining all the power.

Just as the Buddha gained many great powers along the way, he also rejected them all. For trinkets and power is not what it is about. That is the temptation of Christ by Satan in the desert.

So no, I would say spiritual training has nothing to do with self development, no matter how many paper bags you put over your head to “look nice”, you are still wearing a paper bag… This goes for knowing yourself also, knowing yourself is NOT KNOWING YOURSELF. This is fundamental basic thing.

 

 

“He who sees himself only on the outside,

not within, becomes small himself and makes others small.”

–Mani (turfan fragment M 801)

Power and influence, again this is a false notion. God is the only Rabbi as the Jewish proverb goes. Only God has power. Mankind may think he can build a dam and conquer nature, but he is fooling himself. Power is for the weak. Power in its “correct” application is about serving and sacrifice. Agenda is agenda, and again is un-Christ like.

You said

“Emphasis on free thought, not dogma or strict systems? What’s wrong with respecting members to be conscious and
sentient adults who are capable of thinking for themselves and deciding what is the right or wrong course of action
instead of slavish devotion to some ancient text or the words of some “authority figure”? “

There is nothing wrong with free thought. But often it becomes childish. Too often people seek the mysteries, spirituality etc etc out of rebellion.
Free thought is good, rebellion is good it helps grow new branches, new plants, where none would have grown. However it soon devolves into as what James Dean said “What you got?” Until the point is reached when all you are doing is rebelling. You gain a new uniform, a new prison. Your prison becomes that of the “rebel”, the “free thinker”

The fruitfulness of our life depends in large measure on our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility. All he asks of any act he performs is that it be his act. If it is performed by him, it must be good. All words spoken by him must be infallible. The car he just bought is the best for its price, for no other reason that he is the one who has bought it. He seeks no other fruit than his, and therefore he generally gets no other.

If we believe ourselves in part, we may be right about ourselves. If we are completely taken in by our own disguise, we cannot help being wrong.

 

–Thomas Merton

We exchange one strait jacket for another. Instead of embracing what is called the middle way. If we are rebelling we eventually miss the basic truth, the basic truth is we are all on the same boat. Spending your life preening and shouting “look at me, I am special, I think for myself, not like you” is great and dandy, but it really is childish. Like a teenager who dresses up as a punk or a Goth. Nihilism and solipsism only serve to embrace the self as opposed to the SELF. Spiritual masturbation serves no purpose, it may feel good, and seem good..But again, like a drug addict you have to carry on doing it perpetually; or you are back to square one.

Instead there is another way…you open yourself to the wind and fly like a kite, like a kite that is unrestrained..guided by the wind…taken and changed and moved by what is. Instead of fighting the wind and insisting that the wind does not exist. Like the Shakespearean king….you can try to hold back the sea all you like, you are really fooling yourself.

You wrote

” A distinct rejection of absolute moralism? What is wrong with seeing that what may be considered right yesterday may not
be right today (such as burning witches, jews, locking jews up in ghettos, killing in the name of religion, executing
homosexuals, not giving women the same rights as men, etc.). And what is wrong when thinking that what may be
acceptable may not be so tomorrow and that there is a better way? Is this “moral relativism” worse than the moral
absolutism that created the atrocities mentioned above?
Personal, not universal? What is wrong with accepting that there are many paths to spiritual growth and development and
that each person has a right to choose which is the best for them? “

Now right and wrong are arguably subjective terms, yes I agree. In Gnosticism (as you’ll read below if you read it) there is no good and evil per se, there is more “levels of imperfection.” So what are we to do when faced with good and evil, morals and dogmas? We have discernment. Like a good parent would never hand a box of matches and gasoline to a child, we need to work out what is helpful and what is not. For the LHP there is often stated the phrase “nothing is wrong, everything is permissible.” This is the mantra of Chaos magicians, as I am sure you know. Well find and dandy, if we follow this logic, it means we should stick pencils in our ears and nose…after all it is not wrong, and ultimately will help in our spiritual development. Clearly this is absurd. Everything is permissible is nonsensical, an excuse for debauchery and to again bathe in temporary pleasures…back to taking drugs, again.

Your rejection is based upon the idea that absolute moralism=hatred. This is untrue. Anything taken to extremes and to an unswerving ascetic extreme is wrong. Atrocities are atrocities, and are again about the individual not the group. The individual hates the Jew and the homosexual. The individual wants them gone, dead, removed. These people are of the collective, the collective is the collective. By singling out the Jew, the witch, the homosexual…these acts are selfish. Suffer not a homosexual or Jew to live.

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” –Adolf Hitler.

The act of purification, inquisition…again is serving a part of the collective, it is serving individuals. NIMBY or “Not In My Back Yard” mentality. “I do not mind homosexuals or blacks, as long as they don’t live near me.”

In the end LHP becomes miniature acts of solipsism, misanthropy and nihilism.
Solipsism is, well just plain “silly.” I have interacted with the non physical since I was child. Before I even knew what I was doing. So I reject solipsism.

Nihilism is rejection, to take it to a tongue in cheek extreme; I would say the ultimate goal of nihilism is suicide. I would argue nihilism is suicide on a smaller lesser “vibration.”

Just as Nihilism is suicide, misanthropy is purely selfish. But that is the LHP, “selfishness and indulgence.” There really is nothing else to the LHP at a fundamental underlying basic level. If Nihilism is suicide, then misanthropy in its embracing hatred of all mankind can only lead to one conclusion. Misanthropy requires you to kill everyone, but yourself…in order that you are more and more self empowered. Of course this never happens, but on a smaller level people try… Or as the rock star Marilyn Manson wrote “There’s no time to discriminate, hate every motherf****** that gets in your way.”

To conclude, this is what is wrong with the LHP, as you can see, I have indeed thought about this…for a very long time. I really do like to think for myself. But I am not afraid to admit and embrace knowledge, experience “energy” etc. that is far more wise, profound and simply BETTER than my self….as opposed to my SELF.

 

“To respect the personal aspect in man is to respect
his solitude, his right to think for himself, his need
to learn this, his need for love and acceptance by
other persons like himself. Here we are in the realm
of freedom and of friendship, of creativity and of
love. And it is here that religion begins to have a
meaning…”
Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, (N.
Y: Doubleday, 1989) p 82.

Further (although flawed, but still interesting):

“TRUE SELF” AND GAY SPIRITUALITY

 

Dear Friends,

I am posting my response to a question in our Yahoo chat room about

the meaning of the term “archon.” I hope this very brief discussion

may interest you in finding more about the subject, perhaps in the

Nag Hammadi text “Hypostasis of the Archons.”

I will be posting a brief discussion before the end of the week in

combination with this one — What is an “Aeon”?

-Matthew

Here is the archon discussion:

An archon, sometimes translated as a “power,” is a spiritual entity

or force that serves the demiurge, the creator of the physical

world. To be really crude about it you could say they are bad

angels, but it is a lot more complicated than that.. just consider

them the forces that define and limit physical existence.

One of the Nag Hammadi texts is called the “Hypostasis of the

Archons,” and has a mythological discussion of their nature.

You know how in Christian mythology there are some beings

called “archangels?” That is borrowed from this same greek word,

meaning “ruler..” so an arch-angel is an angel that is really

powerful and rules over the others, whereas in Gnosticism the

archons are the “rulers of this world,” the princes of the world

that Christ referred to, for example, in the story of Christ being

tempted in the desert. The tempter shows him the world and promises

to give him the “principalities of the world” if he will bow down in

homage…and we would interpret those principalities as the realms

of the archons, so to speak.

The thing I should caution you against is thinking that they

are “demons” or something like that… there are no demons or devils

per se in Gnosticism, because ultimately there is no metaphysical

category of “evil,” just various forms of imperfection. The

demiurge is in some way the full realization of imperfection, just

as God is of perfection. The demiurge personifies and draws within

himself the ultimate manifestations of physical form, limitation,

physical space, time, as well as the dimensions of space-time, as

well as natural laws and natural processes that govern the physical

world — including the law that everything that lives must die.

+Matthew

 

…………….

–
Better than one thousand verses
Where no profit wings the word,
Is one solitary stanza
Bringing peace of mind when heard.